


When We Whisper Together (In this Valley of Dying Stars)

by neierathima



Category: Leverage, NCIS, Psych
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:36:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neierathima/pseuds/neierathima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the world is ruined by aliens, three groups survive in the different areas that remain. What comes after the end from the perspective of six women (Karen Vick, Juliet O'Hare, Sophie Devereux, Parker, Abby Scuito, Ziva David) as they struggle to cope with grief, anger, violence, separation and hope. In the end, for better or worse, life goes on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. NCIS

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot 
> 
> Beta provided by the lovely ￼Havenward. 
> 
> Fanmix for the fic by tinylegacies here: http://tinylegacies.livejournal.com/918551.html

**Prologue:**

The end of the world comes on December 24, but nobody remembers it as anything but the Christmas Massacre. Those that survive to remember. 

Those that survive to remember, and rebuild, and then to forget, until enough time has passed so that the survivors remember is only as the End. 

Until enough time has passed that their children’s children are not survivors but just children, and they do not rebuild but build, and Christmas is only an esoteric ritual belonging to the dead. 

And then it’s just the beginning.

****

 

**Part I: NCIS**

>   
> 
> 
> Czeslaw Milosz - A Song On the End of the World

> On the day the world ends  
>  A bee circles a clover,  
>  A fisherman mends a glimmering net.  
>  Happy porpoises jump in the sea,  
>  By the rainspout young sparrows are playing  
>  And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

> On the day the world ends  
>  Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,  
>  A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,  
>  Vegetable peddlers shout in the street  
>  And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,  
>  The voice of a violin lasts in the air  
>  And leads into a starry night. 

> And those who expected lightning and thunder  
>  Are disappointed.  
>  And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps  
>  Do not believe it is happening now.  
>  As long as the sun and the moon are above,  
>  As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,  
>  As long as rosy infants are born  
>  No one believes it is happening now.

> Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet  
>  Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,  
>  Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:  
>  No other end of the world will there be,  
>  No other end of the world will there be.  
> 

￼  
 **Abby** **January:**

>   
> 
> 
> Nobody heard him, the dead man,  
>  But still he lay moaning  
> 

Abby can’t handle this. As much as she appears to be a wildchild, she’s a child of science, of order. She knows how things work, analyzes from the safety of her lab, where everything can be unplugged and stored safely away. Out here, in here, she knows nothing useful , and that makes her useless.

Tim sits next to her, speculating wildly about the structure of the ship, the locks, a stream of consciousness to fill up the silence she’s creates (abnormally silent - abnormal Abby acting abnormally) Tony hands him a bowl, their hands brushing longer than necessary. A few weeks ago the same thing happened with a lab report, and again Abby doesn’t laugh, just stares at the skin of Tim’s hands, roughened already, and Tony’s bruised knuckles. He’d have bruises on his face, too, she thinks, if she could only look up. 

Tony walks away, Tim passes her the bowl, and what might have been but won’t ever be disappears into the rank air. Tony belongs to Gibbs now, and Tim watches over Abby. She knows what he’s trying to do, and she wants to talk back, to justify his faith her but the words don’t come. All the nowthings get stuck behind the thenthings. How she never wanted to get between them. As if saying it might make a difference, her acknowledging a world that isn’t there, making the world which is, easier. 

Tim stops talking so she picks up the spoon and starts eating. He waits until she’s halfway through the bowl before he picks up where he left off, something about chemical locks. She listens halfheartedly, waits for the others to come back, closes her eyes and tells herself tomorrow could be better. 

￼  
 **February:**

>   
> 
> 
> (Still the dead one lay moaning)  
> 

Ducky keeps looking at the corpses, trying to find out what’s happening to them, even if there’s nothing there to find, but now he mostly rents out his services as a doctor. Sometimes she goes with him as an assistant, but only at the neutral locations, and only when Tony or Ziva can be spared to watch her. It’s usually Tim’s job to watch her, but he doesn’t leave the base anymore. Not since his knee was hurt in a riot, and Ducky couldn’t put it back quite right. He’s better with the new recruits anyway. Training them up, keeping them out of trouble and away from the team’s personal area. Away from her, from their secrets, from Tony and Ziva and Ducky when they sleep. But she’s not allowed to go out by herself. None of them do, except Ziva. She watches Ziva disappear into the dim light sometimes, slipping like a shadow herself through the shadows, gone past the barricades into the ever shrinking mass of people.

They don’t ask where she goes, but they don’t doubt the information she brings back to them, either. 

She misses going outside but she doesn’t like to leave the narrow walls that make up their base _(not home, never home)_. She doesn’t like the people that are never happy, the smells and the death and the terrible food. She doesn’t have her computers or her equipment or anything to make her feel like herself: in control of her domain and unconquerable in a violent universe. 

￼  
 **March:**

>   
> 
> 
> I was much further out than you thought  
> And not waving but drowning.  
> 

Paper is hard to come by, computers and such essentially nonexistent, so she keeps it all in her head. She starts counting off each day like this:

Gibbs, Tony, Tim, Ziva, Ducky, her. 

She layers on top of that all her observations, fears, data, memories. All the things she knows now and knew then and is terrified of forgetting. And underneath the days that pile on her, full of other people’s terror, this: 

Gibbs, Tony, Tim, Ziva, Ducky, her. 

While not as well versed in psychology as Ducky, she knows enough to see what she’s doing. Constructing her own world on top of her team. She can turn Ducky’s faith in humanity and Gibbs’ rules into civil order; Ziva’s explorations and Tim’s need for explanations into the answers she just hasn’t found yet. And inside Tony’s smiles, however fake, this: 

Gibbs, Tony, Tim, Ziva, Ducky. 

Her. 

 

￼  
 **April:**

>   
>  Poor chap, he always loved larking  
> And now he’s dead  
> 

One day, Ziva and Ducky and Tony and Gibbs go out and Ducky doesn’t come back.

She wails, the sound causing people around her to shudder, not that she notices or cares. The cry is picked up, carried along in waves of pain, breaking against the walls and returning to her magnified tenfold. A fitting tribute to her lost friend, a fine accompaniment to her grief. She has mourned almost everyone she ever loved, an entire world lost in all it’s glories and horrors, but this is the first she has seen. The first that belonged entirely to her, these five who she was allowed to keep. 

She screams but Tim still holds her, stone faced in the wake of her shuddering sobs. 

She cries until she can’t anymore, until everything she is has been wrung out of her. Gibbs puts a hand on her, “ _Abby_ ,” softly, but she recoils in terror. 

“Don’t call me that. Don’t call me anything. Leave me alone.” 

Tim releases her, lets her curl up in her dark corner, face hidden in Ducky’s spare shirt, body turned away from them. 

She sits, silently, eating what’s brought to her, dozes when can’t stay awake any longer. She knows that Tim and Tony are afraid this is a repeat of what happened when they first got here but she doesn’t know how to explain her fear. Ducky died because he was weak, because here, the weak die. Tony and Tim are strong, they wouldn’t understand. 

When the fear recedes it leaves a hungry anger in its place. Abby can’t afford to be weak anymore, and the knowledge gnaws at her. 

The rage fills her, pushes her into action. She sees Ziva in a new light, understanding, possibly for the first time the particular darkness lurking in her eyes. The two women talk softly and the next night Ziva slips out into the crowds. 

Ziva comes back almost three days later, bloody and tired, to drop Ducky’s bag at Abby’s feet. 

She isn’t as good as Ducky, but she’s better than most at figuring things out. Between the other’s first aid training they get by. Trade for what they need, not to do the right thing, like Ducky. 

Desperation still pushes people and others try it again, but she isn’t weak anymore, like Ducky was, and she survives. This time Gibbs goes out, Tony for once left behind. 

He comes back, not Gibbs, Ducky’s friend, but Gibbs, Gunnery Sergeant, more Marine than anything else. Tony blames himself for the changes in the other man, but she understands about not being weak.

 

￼  
 **May:**

>   
>  It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,  
> 

She knows things have changed when Gibbs lets Tony push him into an alcove one day, a scant few seconds that she doesn’t get to see, but which has Gibbs breathing differently after. Not more easily, but more sure.

After, their people do not turn wary eyes away when Ziva walks by. Tony’s back, so carefully straight, is less tense, and Tim sleeps more nights than not. 

Something is changing, but she can’t quite put her finger on what. It’s a light day, as days go, no one trying to kill them, no one dead, and they get exactly what they mean to at the black market that roams the lowest levels. She sees Ziva close her eyes and sniff the air and nods to herself, knowing that she isn’t the only one that feels it. 

Ziva tilts her head to her, a question she responds to with a shake of her own. If Tim brings it up, she’ll look into it, but until then there’s no point on wasting energy on another empty mystery. 

 

￼  
 **June:**

>   
>  it was too cold always  
> I was much too far out all my life  
> And not waving but drowning.  
> 

The population has leveled out, the food adjusted to suit their specific physiological needs. According to Ziva’s sources, there have been no more reports of allergic reactions or malnutrition. She carefully adds the data Ziva brings, presented exactly as Ducky preferred, and adds it to the ever growing list of facts that mean nothing. Small gangs of fanatically loyal followers, under skilled and ruthless leadership, keep order among the prisoner population.

Gibbs walks the corridors, Tony ever on his heels, keeping their little corner of this tiny world civil if not safe. 

She can’t forget that’s never, ever safe. 

She let’s Tim’s voice wash over her, absently processing the bits of intelligence stuck in among his stories, memories, dreams. His arms rests across her stomach, hand rubbing absent patterns on her skin, warm and comforting. Ziva is here tonight, back to the wall, breath slow and steady. In a dark corner she can see the outline of Tony’s shoulder, his leg, Gibbs’ back. Tony’s sighs are restrained by a heavy hand. 

She rests her head on the pillow that still, in her imagination if no where else, smells of Ducky instead of dirt and sweat. She closes her eyes. 

Breathes in. 

Breathes out. 

Falls easily into sleep. Tomorrow is, after all, another day.

 

￼  
 **Ziva** **January:**

>   
>  Stasis in darkness.  
> 

Ziva reacts without thinking.

She locates Gibbs, Tony, Tim, Ducky, Abby.

Gibbs, Tony and Tim are armed, Ducky and Abby are not. They take up positions around Ducky and Abby, Gibbs in front, the boys behind on either side, Ziva on point. 

A blow to the head on a man she doesn’t know, possibly an imminent brawl. Wherever they are is over crowded, inside, and hot. Ducky moves towards the injured man, Gibbs pulls him back. Ziva covers them. Too late, someone identifies a potential asset, tries to grab the doctor. Ziva cracks him on the back of the skull with her sidearm. Too crowded a space to fire, and she can’t afford to waste ammunition. Gibbs moves them away, the injured men getting lost as the crowd swarms over them. Trampled probably, under the weight of panic. 

Tony gets them into a corner, sheltered on three sides, high ground, no levels above them. Abby is cooperative but non verbal, Ducky is alert, responsive but obedient, his protests silenced easily. Tim sees to the two civilians as she takes up position at the entrance to their temporary camp. Gibbs and Tony scout the area. Before they go out she gives Tony a nod, one he returns, eyes hard. Once she watched him beat a man nearly to death while still tied to a chair, and she wants to tell him something that will make him smile, but right now they need that man. Below them the crowd shudders and rolls, a solid mass of noise and fear and filth, screaming pain and confusion. 

 

￼  
 **February:**

>   
>  God’s lioness,  
> How one we grow  
> 

Gibbs moves in front of Ducky, and though Ziva can’t see the knife, she knows it’s there. She tenses, but doesn’t move from the wall, one hand palming a well balanced shiv. Tony steps up, mouth running. He speaks for Gibbs. For all of them really; for her and Abby because the women don’t, for Ducky because Gibbs won’t let him, for Tim because he can’t leave.

A few more words and they take their injured comrade, angrily refusing to pay. Gibbs lets them go. 

Now, she watches her team’s six as they head home. 

Later, she will go take what belongs to them, one way or another. The man is already dying, anyway. 

 

￼  
 **March:**

>   
>  Suicidal, at one with the drive  
> Into the red  
> 

This is not the worst place Ziva has ever adapted to, honestly. Everybody here is equal, their only assets the strength and skills they brought with them. Whoever is holding them here is not another human, wearing different clothes and saying different prayers but the same underneath the skin. It’s a small comfort, but Ziva holds it close nonetheless.

Ziva doesn’t much care who - or what - _they_ are, as long as they aren’t human. She is not sure she has it within her to endure another act of human horror. The only immediate threats are other humans, trying just as they are to survive, and she is well suited to dealing with that. She doesn’t begrudge them the desire to survive, but, like always, it will not stop her from protecting her own. She acknowledges that it is of interest to Ducky and Tim and Abby, and she does not contradict or dismiss their curiosity. It is her duty to protect the team, theirs to wonder. 

 

￼  
 **April:**

>   
>  Dead hands, dead stringencies.  
> 

01\. She hears a disquieting rumor from a source in one of the lower decks; a small, angry man who stays alive only through the quality of information he provides

03\. Ziva follows the rumor for awhile, chasing it down dimly lit corridors, but it trails off into one or another crowd of people and then it’s time for her to return to the team. 

04\. She keeps an ear open for it, waiting for it to come around again

20\. The trade goes wrong from the start, and somewhere in the fight Ducky is hit, his body lying bloody on the floor, bleeding out in minutes.

22\. She paces for days, restless, but Gibbs will not let her leave while Abby remains shaking and crying in the corner, inconsolable. 

25\. Abby wakes, the need for vengeance clear in her eyes, and Ziva is happy to provide.

28\. Once she knows where that rumor was going it’s easy to trace it back to the loose lips that caused it, but she takes her time pulling out her pound of flesh. 

30\. Ziva hears a rumor from one of her contacts in the lower levels. She persuades him to be very honest about his source. 

 

￼  
 **May:**

>   
>  Black sweet blood mouthfuls,  
> Shadows.  
> Something else  
> 

She pushes on the shoulders of the man beneath her, pressing him down into the metal floor. One hand on his bare shoulder, nails digging into flesh, the other wrapped in his shirt, twisted around his neck. A few tugs and it would cut off his air, if she chose (she doesn’t - Gibbs doesn’t like it when she’s rough on the recruits). Worn pants around his knees as she takes her momentary pleasure out of him. The blood rushes underneath his skin as Ziva presses her mouth to his neck, leaving her marks. Tony will smirk and Gibbs will nod his approval at her choice and for awhile, until they fade away, the welts she puts on his skin will confer status. For the moment, she grinds her hips down and lets him fist a hand into her hair.

\---

The man beneath her quivers in fear as Ziva holds him down, knee against his spine, pressing just enough to hurt. The sound of her knife sliding out of its sheath sets him whimpering but she credits him with not begging. He gave her a good fight, however ill advised starting it may have been on his part. Ziva rolls the feelings of fists on flesh over in her mind, the pleasure of stretching limbs to wrestle the larger man into submission. She drags the blade along his cheek three times, sketching a small mark that will surely scar (she knows, this isn’t the first time). She lets up and he runs. 

 

￼  
 **June:**

>   
>  And I  
> Am the arrow  
> 

Ziva lets herself be a wild thing, dancing her way through the world. She fights when she has to, tussles to remind people where she stands, breaking bones with a certain satisfaction only when called for.

A dislocated finger is a warning, a broken knee as good as death sentence and she does it all with enjoyment not in causing pain but in her place in the world. She watches her back when she’s alone, always wary of those who might hold a grudge or want what they have no right to or may simply be looking for a fight. Simple actions with simple reactions and she is good at this. 

She seeks, she finds, or doesn’t, and then returns to her people, offering up whatever she has gleaned to her little family, head held high. She is good at this world.

 


	2. Leverage

**Part 2: Leverage**

>   
> 
> 
> Robert Frost - Fire and Ice
> 
> Some say the world will end in fire;  
> Some say in ice.  
> From what I’ve tasted of desire  
> I hold with those who favor fire.  
> But if I had to perish twice,  
> I think I know enough of hate  
> To say that for destruction ice  
> Is also great  
> And would suffice.  
> 

**Sophie:**

**January:**

>   
> 
> 
> But I would rather think about your tongue  
> experiencing and transmitting pleasure  
> to one or another multi-sensual organ  
> -like memory.

She is fortunate enough to be with a very rich, well protected ‘friend’ when They come. Later, she will be disappointed, if not surprised, in herself for not thinking of the others sooner. She is not prone to wallowing in guilt, however, so she doesn’t blame herself for being first and foremost concerned with her own survival.

When the reports, information gleaned from whatever sources still available, no matter how unreliable, start coming in, Sophie deliberately does not consider two things: 

She does not contemplate the chances of her having been in what is already being referred to as the safe zone - she knows well enough that you only play the hand that’s been dealt and never the ones that weren’t. And she doesn’t allow the thought that the others might be dead to enter into her mind. 

Her set up is nice enough, as protected as can be expected and with regular, if not overwhelming, access to food. But while she considers staying she never considers the possibility that the others are not alive elsewhere, even if the odds are heavily favored in a different direction. 

She spends almost a month staying put, developing useful relationships and ensuring her place in this new world, before the memories become too much. 

In the end, it’s her certainty that they must be alive which compels her to go. She can’t help but imagine what they’re doing at any given moment. She knows them too well, has too little use for self delusion to avoid the reality of it. 

Nate is drinking, heavily, slowly wrecking himself to match his home. Eliot, deadly, beautiful Eliot, more scared of himself than any enemy, will be doing anything to keep his people safe. 

Alec will be so scared with his life - his real world of computers and machines - so destroyed. 

And Parker, who has no doubt seen her entire world fall apart more than once before will try to keep them together, not understanding why they’re falling apart. 

She can’t forget them so she must, it seems, go to them. 

**February:**

> Sentient organisms,  
> we symbolize feeling, give  
> the spectrum each sense organ  
> perceives, by analogy, to others.

She needs to get across the ocean by the end of the month. Its a dangerous prospect, the chances of straying into burned territory high, the chances of running into unfriendly people no lower, the means of crossing untrustworthy to say the least. But she is determined, and the man in front of her can be bought.

She lets him kiss her hand, smiling, maintaining the pretense of civility in a no-longer-civilized world. 

“Mrs. Noble?” 

She twists the ring on her left hand ever so slightly, diamond catching the dim light of the bar. She inclines her head, dark hair tumbling over her shoulder, revealing the perfect skin of her neck, sending up a drift of sweet smelling perfume. 

“Yes.” 

It’s true enough, in its own way. It’s always true, no matter the lie. She knows exactly how to let it be true, completely, in every part of her. That’s what the others don’t, or can’t, or won’t know. 

She lets him order her a drink. 

Nate knows, but is too afraid of losing himself. Eliot’s self is hard won, and he will play a part if necessary, but he will not let his self go. Alec is too solid, self assured in his own way, and Parker barely knows herself well enough to know what is true. 

Sophie - _only ever Sophie now, when the others wait for Sophie’s return_ \- flirts. 

The self-styled Captain of his little mercenary ship, fond of comfort and the good life which no longer exists, is half in love with her before she finishes her first drink. As good as Sophie ever was before, she is so much better now. She learned early how to deal with desperation, and to hate having to. 

Sophie, or rather, Mrs. Noble, wife of a late, lamentable, member of an old European family, gracefully brushes a hand against his as she reaches for another drink. They are being watched, of course, in this refuge of criminals. Only those with very few scruples have attained any measurable wealthy in this scrap of livable earth. And they did not survive by being oblivious. Of course, if they were not being watched, her new friend would take no pleasure from having her in his orbit. 

She lets him make the suggestion, a halting, unsubtle offer, which she pretends to consider as if she did not already know what he was going to give her. As if she had any other options. As if she would even consider not returning to those she thinks about so constantly that they may as well be with her. 

With Nate’s self-depreciating honesty she tells him of the loss of her husband. 

With Eliot’s seductive smile she pulls him up the stairs, with Alec’s boundless enthusiasm she lays him down. 

What she offers him his so much less than what she’s getting, but he doesn’t see it that way. She’s very good at her job, after all. 

It may very well be madness (Parker’s madness, perhaps) to undertake this journey. Better, safer, to stay where she is, find a name she can wear to build a new life, one better suited to this new world. 

Sophie - _just Sophie_ \- lays in bed as her latest mark sleeps beside her, and contemplates home.

 

**March:**

> Your mother tongue nurtures

The storm that overtakes the ship in the middle of the ocean may possibly be the first thing that genuinely scares Sophie. Everything else comes down to humans being human, and that she can handle, no matter how desperate the circumstances. The storm, however, is only natural, and she knows better than to try and beat nature.

She lets the Captain tell her all about weather patterns and shifting tides, closing her eyes and letting herself be somewhere else. It’s always dangerous to lose focus, and they are very far out if she one day can’t control the captain, or he takes a dislike to her manipulations, but she needs to not be there for a moment. 

Sophie lets herself imagine her team surrounds her. Alec is pontificating on what the storm means in terms of global climate change. Eliot is telling scary stories about thunder and lightning to get a rise out of Parker, and Nate, sensing her discomfort, is not at all subtly finding a reason to slide a cup of hot tea into her hands, letting his fingers linger.

She opens her eyes and one of the Captain’s men has put a metal cup, lukewarm, into her hands. The captain is still talking, no apparent change of emotion on his face. She nods the appropriate thanks to the seaman, and turns an interested ear to the talk of currents and fishing. 

**April:**

> And think of a bar of lavender soap, a pleasure  
> to see, and moistened, rub on your skin, a pleasure  
> especially to smell, but if you taste  
> it (though smell is most akin to taste)  
> what you experience will not be pleasure;

They land, not shipwrecked exactly but too close to it for Sophie’s comfort, far off from her intended destination. The captain explains that isn’t unusual and then is gone as soon as he can get back in the water. She’s hardly surprised enough to be annoyed at his quick exit. The little string of islands is run by a dictator, a petty if well armed man who is happy to hold his territory with his own private army.

One of the islands holds a resort that catered to the idle rich and now serves as a private community that Sophie fits herself into effortlessly. She’s always been good at landing on her feet. 

She wastes a few weeks lounging on a beach with shell shocked socialites who pretend nothing is wrong until she can almost forget that beyond the horizon the world is still burning. One day she wakes up already thinking of justifications for staying. She spends the day normally, that is to say, every moment an elaborately constructed fantasy, while in her mind she sees four faces asking why she isn’t coming home. 

It’s a little late to decide she can’t live her life that way, but Sophie has always been able to play off of the most unexpected twists. 

**May:**

> the tongue accomplishes what, perhaps, no other organ can.

Sophie is not above begging. She doesn’t like to admit it, but at this point it is most definitely true. It may not look like it either, but the truth of it is she is asking for something and has nothing near its value to offer in return. She pulls up every scrap of pride she has left (more of that, perhaps, than anything else) and does what she must.

She waits, mask of patience firmly in place, while the other woman decides her fate. They sit together at a tacky hotel table, all glass and badly carved wood, but Sophie thinks it might be more fitting for her to be kneeling in front of a throne. More honest to the situation, anyway. The thought has her repressing a smile, imagining suggesting that for a job and her friends’ reactions. 

Eventually, she agrees to Sophie’s request and if Nate were here she would smile at his satisfaction as if it was no surprise she was given exactly what she wanted. But Nate isn’t here, of course, and Sohpie was not at all certain. 

She can admit, if only to herself, that she is jealous of this woman with her kingdom and her family standing around her. Grateful, yes, but jealous for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is the mercy required to grant Sophie’s wish. Were their positions reversed Sophie would not have risked her family for anything, no matter how much of herself she sees in the other woman’s eyes. 

 

**June:**

> That’s a primary difficulty: pleasure  
> means something, and something different, for each organ;  
> each person, too.

She gets her hands on a car (a truck, really, that before she would never have touched) and a map with safe spots and fuel stations marked on it. Within a week a dozen people have offered to let her join them, their reasons as varied as their destinations, but she turns them all down and points herself to the north east.

At some point she hits a thunderstorm that takes her four days to drive through. When she’s past she rolls down the windows. To the north she can see dark lines of smoke against the horizon but outside it still smells like rain. 

 

**Parker:  
January: **

> this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well

Eliot is the first to give up the pretense of having clients and focus on surviving. He’s the one who puts together a plan, getting the four of them holed up outside of town in a big house with food and water and guns. They all go along with him, even Nate, who just keeps calling Sophie over and over, trying to get through. Hardison gets reports: people getting sick, fires and looting and whole towns burned to the ground, and some people - a lot of people - just missing. Just gone.

Power grids go out, and it gets cold, colder than it should be and the storms beat at the windows Eliot has boarded up. Parker stares at the fire while Nate calls phones that don’t connect and Hardison tries to get a signal and Eliot cooks chicken soup on a camp stove. 

They get sick, one by one, but they all get better. Parker only gets a mild fever, and feels better in a few days. Nate is the worst, sounding like he’s going to cough up a lung for weeks after his fever breaks. 

It’s still cold at the end of January and Nate is still coughing sometimes (and self medicating with lots of whiskey) but Eliot decides they can’t stay there anymore. The boys load up the van while Parker writes notes for Sophie in case she got any of Nate’s messages and comes here first. 

Nate and Eliot and Alec all look weary and scared when they pile into the van, Eliot in the drivers seat, but Parker shrugs to herself. Sophie will catch them up in a little while.

 

**February:**

> this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet

Parker is very useful now, but the lack of money makes her feel too much like the pickpocket she used to be. She doesn’t like that feeling, so she keeps little piles of money wherever they go. She can’t access her bank accounts, and it doesn’t really mean anything anyway, but it makes her feel better. And also, it’s good for starting fires when it’s cold. It’s pretty much always cold now, or at least if feels like it. Nate said something about all the fires and chemical reactions and stuff about the atmosphere, but he was pretty drunk when he said it, and even though Parker tried very hard to pay attention, it didn’t make much sense. They don’t mention what he says when he’s really drunk if he doesn’t bring it up himself, unless it’s really important, and then Eliot has a quiet word with him in their room and Alec and Parker put on headphones and turn up the music and pretend not to hear the yelling.

She knows it’s important that she pay attention. That’s what Sophie would say if she were here. She’s not yet but she will be, Parker is sure of it. She knows how bad Sophie wants to get back to them, and Sophie is really good at getting what she wants. Parker doesn’t mention this in front of anyone, because Alec just tells her it’s impossible, and Nate gets upset. Eliot doesn’t mind talking about Sophie, she’s pretty sure, but he’s always with Nate so she can’t. 

Nate and Eliot, her and Alec. Never go anywhere alone, never go anywhere unarmed. Rule number one. 

There are a lot more rules now, and some rules that used to be important aren’t so much anymore. Like killing people, and having Alone Time. Parker is always very careful to follow the rules, so that Alec won’t go off on his own, and Eliot won’t have to kill too many people, and Nate won’t drink too much. Sometimes they pretend that Alec is on his own, and that the guys Eliot beats up might survive, and that one day Nate won’t always smell of whiskey, or vodka, or whatever he can get. It isn’t true, but they pretend. 

If she just keeps following the rules, they have to also. Just until Sophie shows up and gives them better rules. 

Parker has gotten very good at pretending.

**March:**

> this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up

Parker is starting to worry about Sophie, and how long its taking her to get here. She also misses having a real place to stay instead of moving all the time. Once, she asked Eliot if they could stay a bit longer but he got mad. It’s the only time he’s been really mean to her since they started liking each other. Alec explains about gangs and fires and aliens and Parker nods like she agrees with him but really she doesn’t get it.

It wasn’t any safer before and now there are less rules to follow and no police so it’s easier to make sure that they are as safe as they can be. 

She still leaves notes for Sophie everywhere they go. Sophie will be very put out if she has to spend too much time looking for them. 

 

**April:**

> this is how you smile to someone you don’t like very much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely

Parker sort of wishes she didn’t know what the boys were thinking. She didn’t used to, Before. Sophie’s job was to know what was going on inside everyone’s heads, even Parker’s, even when Parker herself didn’t.

But Sophie isn’t here. So now she has to do it, because it’s one thing the boys can’t do. She thinks maybe it’s a ‘girl thing’ Sophie talks about, but she doesn’t what Sophie’s thinking about because Sophie isn’t here. If Sophie were here, she’d know, and she could explain to Parker, but then she wouldn’t have to know because then Sophie would. 

A hand, warm on her back. It’s Eliot. He’s thinking about the job later, worrying about Nate and Alec out there on their own, what she’s thinking about, if the building is still secure, if there will be chinese radishes left at the store they’re looting later. She only knows that last one because Eliot told her, wistfully, about cooking them this week. He doesn’t like the frozen and canned food they’ve been left with, but Parker’s never been too bothered by it, even if she does miss Eliot’s treats. 

“Everything ok in there darlin'?” 

It’s always darling now, never Parker. Eliot never calls anyone by name anymore. Nate never calls anyone anything. Just says you. Alec says he’s grieving, which makes Eliot grunt in disapproval, but Parker knows that ‘Sophie’ has gotten stuck in his throat and nothing else can get past it. She doesn’t mind, because she knows all about names getting stuck. Alec calls her beautiful, and beloved, and sometimes amazing and sometimes crazy. Always something to make her smile at him, so she tries to remember to smile, even when she’s sad. 

Eliot isn’t asking about the safe in front of her, or her bag of tools already packed and repacked. He’s asking about what she’s thinking, because he doesn’t just know, and he wants to. Eliot worries. Not too much, because it’s very dangerous and worrying is completely reasonable, but just enough. 

She likes it when Eliot worries about her, because it means he wants her to be ok, but it also makes her sad because having to worry so much makes Eliot sad. 

**May:**

> this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast;

Parker is very excited when Nate and Eliot start talking about long term strategies. Alec says he could maybe get a generator going and Eliot thinks he’s figured out how the gangs have sorted themselves out, and how they can get supplies if they keep a tight schedule.

Nate nods and turns to her and asks about security on some of the private, remote mansions in the area. She tells them everything she can remember while Alec mumbles about places with land maps and surveys. Eliot lays out what they need to last out there and it starts to come together. It feels like before, when they figured out how to work a con, and it makes her miss Sophie horribly. 

When she next gets a chance, Parker steals a tiny, soft pillow the exact color of Sophie’s favorite jacket. She tucks it into the back of the van and smiles when Nate runs an absent hand along the fabric as they drive out of the city. 

**June:**

> don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all

They develop a routine of sorts. Even with all there is to do (Parker never thought she would miss people so much, who could be paid to do things) they’re still left with a lot of free time. Nate wants them to be careful not to attract attention, so they limit the trips into more populated areas to supply runs for what they really need.

Alec starts building his own generators, carefully designing them to last, and then setting up every system he can get working on their limited electricity. At Eliot’s insistence the first thing to go up is a security net around the edges of their property. 

Eliot takes up home improvement as a hobby and Nate collects books that Parker sees him reading over and over again. 

Parker winds her way through the rooms and hallways, setting traps for herself and the looping back to deftly avoid them. Every morning she waits at the upstairs window, watching the gravel drive. Sometimes Alec wanders by, or Nate on one of his rambling walks that Eliot drops everything to accompany him on. 

One day, someone will walk up that path, tripping Alec’s motion sensors and making Eliot curse as he cooks breakfast. Nate will not even look up from his book.


	3. Psych

**Part 3: Psych**

> T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men

> MISTAH KURTZ -- HE DEAD.  
> A penny for the Old Guy

> I .

> We are the hollow men  
> We are the stuffed men  
> Leaning together  
> Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!  
> Our dried voices, when  
> We whisper together  
> Are quiet and meaningless  
> As wind in dry grass  
> Or rats’ feet over broken glass  
> In our dry cellar

> Shape without form, shade without colour,  
> Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

> Those who have crossed  
> With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom  
> Remember us--if at all--not as lost  
> Violent souls, but only  
> As the hollow men  
> The stuffed men. 

> II. 

> Eyes I dare not meet in dreams  
> In death’s dream kingdom  
> These do not appear:  
> There, the eyes are  
> Sunlight on a broken column  
> There, is a tree swinging  
> And voices are  
> In the wind’s singing  
> More distant and more solemn  
> Than a fading star. 

> Let me be no nearer  
> In death’s dream kingdom  
> Let me also wear  
> Such deliberate disguises  
> Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves  
> In a field  
> Behaving as the wind behaves  
> No nearer--

> Not that final meeting  
> In the twilight kingdom

> III.

> This is the dead land  
> This is the cactus land  
> Here the stone images  
> Are raised, here they receive  
> The supplication of a dead man’s hand  
> Under the twinkle of a fading star.

> Is it like this  
> In death’s other kingdom  
> Waking alone  
> At the hour when we are  
> Trembling with tenderness  
> Lips that would kiss  
> Form prayers to broken stone. 

> IV.

> The eyes are not here  
> There are no eyes here  
> In this valley of dying stars  
> In this hollow valley  
> This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

> In this last of meeting places  
> We grope together  
> and avoid speech  
> Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

> Sightless, unless  
> The eyes reappear  
> As the perpetual star  
> Multifoliate rose  
> Of death’s twilight kingdom  
> The hope only  
> Of empty men. 

> V. 

> Here we go round the prickly pear  
> Prickly pear prickly pear  
> Here we go round the prickly pear  
> At five o’clock in the morning.

> Between the idea  
> And the reality  
> Between the motion  
> And the act  
> Falls the shadow  
> For Thine is the Kingdom

> Between the conception  
> And the creation  
> Between the emotion  
> And the response  
> Falls the Shadow  
> Life is very long

> Between the desire  
> And the spasm  
> Between the potency  
> and the existence  
> Between the essence  
> And the descent  
> Falls the Shadow  
> For Thine is the Kingdom

> For thine is  
> Life is  
> For thine is the

> This is they way the world ends  
> This is they way the world ends  
> This is they way the world ends  
> Not with a bang but a whimper.

￼

**Karen**   
**January:**

> the first of these  
> to name the living, dead;

Carlton and Juliet burst into her room as she’s trying to get Iris into clothes, Shawn, Gus and Henry on their heels. She assumes at first that they’ve gotten mixed up on in a case of some sort and her vacation is no longer anything of the sort. Then Juliet turns on the radio and she hears a distant voice talking about the end of the world.

Shawn turns to Gus and mutters, not at all sarcastically, “It’s war of the worlds out there.” Henry slaps his arm to shut up him up. They all look to her as if she knows anything, and she holds her daughter tighter and tries not to think about her husband and her sister, or anyone else. She can worry about them later, for now she has people here who need her. 

“First, we need to find out what’s true. If it’s as bad as it sounds, there’s going to be rioting soon. Here’s what we’ll do.” 

Right at this moment she wants nothing more than to lay down on the bed, curled around her daughter, and pretend everything is all right. She can’t afford the luxury of denial right now, and she doesn’t know when she might again. 

 

**February:**

> I multiply,  
> renew and bless

Karen sat at the window of her suite, sharing the sunset with her daughter. A month ago, she’d been sitting on the beach doing the same thing.

A month ago, this had been a hotel room, she’d been allowed to sit out on the balcony without a guard (a cop, formerly) between her and the sky. 

Plenty of things had changed since the attacks. Calling it the end of the world was a luxury she couldn’t afford, though part of her wanted to, to acknowledge what had happened as being personal and profound. But her position required a certain distance, to maintain the illusion that she was in control. 

That she was a leader and not a petty dictator holding her much shrunken world together with intimidation, bluffing, and sometimes even violence. 

Karen rocked in the chair, her child cooing happily, oblivious maybe, or already adapting to the new world. In the distance, she could still see fires burning. Things changed. 

Eventually, her child would walk on this beach, have children of her own in this converted, unexpected home. She might never leave the island but she would be safe on it, no matter what happened anywhere else. 

Karen would make sure of it. 

 

￼  
 **March:**

> The mysteries remain

Karen finds herself unexpectedly pleased with the minutiae of running a colony. It would be foolish to assume she could do whatever she wanted but what she must do she can at least do in her own way.

Karen Vick, as Interim, and later actual Chief of Police, was often criticized for her approach to personnel management. Giving too much leeway to her (more than) slightly obsessive head detective, letting a young, female detective take on too much responsibility, hiring Shawn and Gus at all. She put up with a lot of crap from the mayor and his people, folded when maybe she shouldn’t have, but she always stood firm when it came to backing her people, because she believes people rise to expectations. 

They’ve all done exactly that, and she’s grateful, but at the same time she misses the old world more than a little. She recognizes it as a response to the hopelessness, the strangeness of her current situation but allows herself the feeling all the same. Sometimes she wants desperately to be _home_. Because even if it meant Carlton waiting for her to slip up, Shawn being completely uncontrollable, and having to put up with the politics of professional idiots, at least then she’d know the best she could hope for was more than just surviving another few weeks. 

 

￼  
 **April:**

> Demeter in the grass,  
> Bacchus in the vine;

Every one of her people get what they want here, both in the sense they flourish under the new world, but also that she ensures special privileges for her own people and she wonders if that makes her a tyrant or a good leader or both or if it makes her nothing at all. If it just is.

Carlton can be a commanding workaholic whom no one questions because there is always work. With how well he does here she wonders why he never considered the military. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been enough either. 

Shawn is believed absolutely in public and believed in absolutely in private. His talents which once bordered on the freakish (and she is accustomed enough now to absolute honesty that she can admit she was often times more disconcerted than impressed) have now come out the other side as amazing. 

Gus can support Shawn without following him, have his own place, though his position wears on him. He, like all the rest of them, survives. He, like her, wonders at what cost pride. 

Juliet is perfect in her role, a strong right hand, a survivor, a vision of what will be in the new world. She wears her grief like a shield and her hope like a sword and with it sways the people to her cause. 

 

￼  
 **May:**

> I am the vine,  
> the branches, you,  
> and you. 

There are hundreds, probably thousands of refugees in far worse places than her little island. Karen is not unaware of this, and she feels sympathy for them, but her first duty is to protect her people. Which means tightly controlling her own borders. While in a convenient route through the safe zone, they are far enough away from either the northern or souther quarantine lines to avoid the mess associated with that, and Karen has no intention of letting her people get entangled.

She knows there are people alive, some of her people maybe, but even if she were willing to break quarantine for them, it wouldn’t be worth it to have to deal with the other factions involved in holding the line. 

Everybody wants out, nobody wants to go in, and there are lots of dead bodies floating to testify to that. Which is why Karen is looking over her guest with well concealed surprise. The woman makes a convincing argument - not that they _should_ help her, but that it couldn’t really hurt. Karen knows better, but she’s impressed all the same. 

It might be the pride the woman wraps around herself when she makes her case, or the certainty that whatever lies beyond quarantine is better than being alone, or maybe it’s Karen’s own guilt about not racing off after her family, but she decides to help her. 

When she goes, Karen wishes her good luck, and doesn’t ask her to carry messages or look for anybody that Karen didn’t get to say goodbye to. 

 

￼  
 **June:**

> I keep the law,  
> I hold the mysteries true

It isn’t the same, and yet it’s so similar. Not paperwork; rules and regulations and procedures that govern the life of a police chief. But there’s inventory, which Carlton and Henry do at the corner table of her office (the room next to her suite, doors cut through the wall for exactly this purpose)

On the balcony, Shawn is ‘interviewing’ the latest hires gleaned from the survivors and refuges moving around the narrow band of world left. She is very familiar with Shawn’s brand of artificial casual, and cannot help noting, without criticism or judgement, the differences between the old (or more correctly, young) Shawn and this more mature version. He wears it well, which she knows bothers him as much as anything else. His manner is as easy as it ever was but she can see the seriousness in the set of his shoulders, and Karen knows (trusts) that he is getting every scrap of useful information out of them. When he’s done, she will be able to trust them exactly as far as Shawn says she can, even if he doesn’t always say what about them makes him sure she should or shouldn’t. 

Gus is doing paperwork. Or rather, what qualifies as paperwork,a few trusted aids beside him. He talks to the recruits as Shawn sends them through the door, ostensibly taking their medical histories, assigning living quarters, the trivialities that make a wreckage into a city, but more importantly soothing the rattled nerves of people who have been on the sharp end of Shawn’s intellect. Gus too has bloomed in this strange new world. She has from time to time considered that it’s as much as being out from under Shawn’s shadows as the sheer need in this new world which demands that those who would survive excel beyond their own expectations of themselves. 

Still, as far as they have drifted apart the two men can still share a look through the glass and know exactly what the other is thinking. She looks away, leaving them to do their jobs. Across the room, Juliet perches on the edge of a chair, one hand cradled on her expanding stomach, the other holding Iris’ hand, Karen’s daughter twirling in lazy, maddening loops. Juliet looks up, catching Karen’s eye and smiling, not widely, but almost familiarly. 

 

**Juliet**  
 **January:**

> feather lost from the tail  
> of a bird, swirling onto a step,  
> swept away by someone who never saw  
> it was a feather

Her relationship with Shawn starts to fall apart almost from the beginning. Juliet can acknowledge that they were probably doomed from the start. As much as she wants to mourn the thing she wants slipping out of her grasp, she’s never been that woman, the one who puts feelings ahead of her job. Especially now, she chooses her duty before anything else.

So while she can see it falling apart she doesn’t have the time or energy to figure out how to put it back together. It’s possible it wasn’t something she ever could fix, that what she and Shawn had was built so structurally unsoundly that failure was intrinsic to their relationship. If that’s the case it’s almost easier knowing that outside forces will get the blame and not her. 

And if she takes a moment, at the beginning of the end, to lean against a wall and weep, well, that’s strictly between her and the architecture. 

**February:**

> Skin ate, walked,  
> slept by itself, knew how to raise a  
> see-you-later hand.

When Shawn storms off, Juliet is struck by the absurdity of the fact that it’s their first fight. Before all this, Juliet never knew quite where she stood with Shawn and he used every excuse to avoid a conflict. She supposes that it’s relaxed enough that they can let off steam but that space only means Juliet has time to question why she and Shawn are still sleeping together.

Things haven’t relaxed that much, however, and she puts it out of her mind to go to a meeting with Henry. When he asks what’s wrong she tells him and he nods, offering neither explanation or justification for his son. She and Henry work together often, and she realizes that she enjoys it. Before, she knew him only by reputation and his association with Shawn. Now, though, they are almost friends. 

When Shawn comes to her later, wearing that small forgive-me smile, she is out of room for any more revelations so she lets him kiss her, beg forgiveness he doesn’t want with his body. She lays in bed after, accepting the comfort while it’s hers to take. Tomorrow she will cut him loose, let this thing between them finally die. He will run to Carlton, she suspects, and she will be just the tiniest bit hurt by that. But she will have duties to attend and when she next needs to stand by Shawn and offer hope to the survivors, they will once again be friends. 

That’s just the type of girl Juliet’s always been. 

 

￼  
 **March:**

> Even now, when skin is not alone,  
> it remembers being alone and thanks something larger  
> that there are travelers, that people go places  
> larger than themselves. 

When she starts getting sick every morning, Juliet suspects she knows what the problem is. Still, she keeps it to herself as long as she can, until one clear day she looks up and Gus is walking across the courtyard towards her. She likes to make herself available for people to talk to when she can, and the once carefully maintained square is accessible while still defensible.

Gus sits next to her, his face serious while they banter back and forth for a minute before finally getting down to it. His list of signs is remarkably comprehensive and she wonders why her own people didn’t bother to say anything. Still, she doesn’t put up much of a protest when he tells her to see their doctor. 

Juliet isn’t at all surprised to hear the news. She sits in Karen’s rooms, her family talking (arguing, really) around her, and she curves a hand over her still flat stomach and lets herself be happy for a moment. Then, of course, it’s time to plan and she’s neither displeased nor offended when Shawn talks about how best to play this new card they’ve been dealt. She knows he’ll deal with it in his own way, and she’s content to let him be whatever kind of father he wants to. They are long past not trusting each other. 

She’s more surprised when Gus brings her flowers acquired from somewhere (he has the most astonishing sources) and offers quiet congratulations. Except she isn’t, really, because she remembers him walking through the people crowding the courtyard, eyes only on her. 

￼  
 **April:**

> Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.  
> Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

It’s only now that she’s lost him that Juliet finally understands Shawn. The knowledge, like everything here, is hard one, gained out of necessity as much as genuine interest. She’s become good at making the former look like the latter. It’s her job to make things look pretty as they build this fort in paradise and call it freedom. At no point did Chief Vick come to her and ask her to apply that boundless optimism, that kind understanding, to securing her leadership. Juliet does it anyway. She understands that maintaining their authority is the best way to ensure their safety.

It’s such a cynical point of view she almost hates it, no matter how much time passes. Shawn was the one, after the dust had settled a little bit on the end of the world and they were counting survivors, to point out the position they were in, and how much worse things could get. 

It’s Shawn who made Henry and Gus make lists of supplies they would need, to set up the Chief as head of their little group of LEO’s, to have Carlton plan security and to make Juliet herself the voice of the confused, the afraid, the people needing guidance. 

She is not so stupid that she can’t see when she’s being used. She allows herself to be presented as the kind mother figure to Shawn’s psychic cum folk hero and the Chief’s wise but stern ruler. 

The Chief steps into her role effortlessly, taking control of the movement Shawn hands her and Juliet can see the relief in his shoulders the day she starts calling the shots. Yet another facet of Shawn she never really saw before. 

The more she learns the more she respects him and the less she loves him. Perhaps she never loved him at all, just one of the many shadows he cast. 

He’s good here, she realizes one day, the broken world fitting perfectly into his own brilliant, broken view of life. She survives, but she’s not sure she’ll ever by comfortable, that the day will come she won’t wake with an unsettled feeling that lingers. But she survives, and Shawn thrives, and together they comfort the people, and make them believe in everything Chief Vick is careful not to promise. 

Juliet hopes her child will have his father’s wicked love of broken things, however much that it pains her, because she knows he will teach their child to act like it either way. 

 

￼  
 **May:**

> But skin felt  
> it was never seen, never known as  
> a long on the map

Juliet is itching for her child to be born, impatient and frustrated with the excess of protection Carlton forces on her. Shawn and Henry agree with him and even Gus is no help, smiling ruefully at her displeasure but making no attempt to stop it. She feels like a prisoner and even though she can see the wisdom of it she still wants to take a gun and head out into the streets.

Even once the baby is born she will have to be careful. Both she and Shawn are well known, and if Juliet has learned anything from police work is that no matter the community someone will find reason to act out a grudge. She considered having children before, when she was a cop, as a female detective it was inevitable the question would come up. She always avoided answering because she wasn’t sure how she really felt. 

She loves her child, but she hates being turned into one of the people to be protected instead of one of the protectors. One day, she imagines, she will adapt to her new role, but just for today she sits quietly alone, resentment choking her. 

 

**June:**

> Love means you breathe in two countries.

Juliet keeps the names of the dead. It’s not her job by any stretch of the imagination. There are people whose entire job comes down to naming the dead, to building monuments in the wreckage for the millions gone, mostly gone namelessly on this small island. But she keeps her own list: Shawn’s mother, his ex-girlfriend, the girl at the coffee shop he had a crush on. Karen’s husband, her sister. Buzz McNabb, Mrs. McNabb, Carlton’s ex wife, Gus’ parents, his sister, everyone at the station, her brother, her nephews, her parents, her entire family. There is a web stretching out from her, each ring a more distant connection, each strand connecting the dead to the living. If she had a way to find out she thinks she could connect every person in the world to this tiny island, a net of the dead holding up the living.

 

**Epilogue:**

Later, those taken will land on a distant planet and finally learn their fate. 

Later, the plague will stop killing long enough for the survivors to start building in the ruined cities. 

Later, those who have quaratined themselves will grow from survivors into societies, their mythology born from a dead civilization. 

They will fight and fuck and grow and build and make up stories to tell when their children ask “why”. 

That is all later, however. 

Now, it is Christmas Eve and no one, save perhaps a few madmen, know it is the end of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full Poem Listing: 
> 
> Abby:  
> Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning
> 
> Ziva:  
> Slyvia Plath - Ariel
> 
> Sophie:  
> Marilyn Hacker - Canzone
> 
> Parker:  
> Jamaica Kincaid - Girl
> 
> Karen:  
> H.D. - mysteries remain
> 
> Juliet:  
> Naomi Shihab Nye - Two Countries


End file.
